I recently purchased Monopoly after a tour of all the charity shops in town, I finally found it , its an old version but still the same as the modern day version. I played it with me and four friends; only the iron was left, after we were a good way through the game (a few houses here and there but no hotels yet) a friend landed on one of my properties; he couldn't afford the rent, so instead of selling houses and mortgaging properties (like in the rules) he did a deal with another player, to loan him a few hundred to pay the bills in return for a 'free' pass giving immunity to his properties. Despite mine and others outrage at this, there was nothing we could do, (without it turning into a physical fight) so instead we decided to also, totally ignore the rules and team up as three and pool our resources together, which also helped to complete some broken sets of properties. We ended up helping each other out of payments, and buying each other houses, eliminated one player from the enemy team, leaving just one. There was also an argument at that point about the properties being donated to their team mate, even though they were out because of my/our properties, this issue was soon resolved, we then owned about 75% of the board, and the demise of the remaining player was inevitable, although he survived for quite a while, thanks to us landing on his property, although we owned a good part of the board, we were only waiting for one player to pass, whereas he had a smaller part of the board but the traffic going past was 3 times of ours. Anyway our team soon won and the game finally ended.
In conclusion; although that the game rules went completely out of the window, playing as a team was actually quite enjoyable as you had someone else to help you out of situations, and could build a bigger empire. Monopoly is a ruthless game but playing in teams made an interesting twist. We agreed we would play again in teams, from the start but only with all player positions filled.
On a side note the free parking rule, where fines can be won when that space is landed on, was also in play, which helped to prolong the game even further.
Wednesday 1 December 2010
Liars Dice Iterations
The basic rules of liars dice is; everyone has five dice, everyone rolls their dice, but so no other players can see, someone starts of with a bid of how many dice with a certain value there are in play, for example: a bid of six 5's means a total of six dice with 5 as their value. In the game ones also count as neutral. The bet must also always increase each round, the next player can then decide to up the bid, or if they think the previous bid was incorrect, they can challenge the bid and all dice are then counted , if the challenge was correct the bidder loses a die, if incorrect the challenger loses a die.
I played the game in a group of seven, I found the game very simple, but enjoyable, partly because of its simplicity. After a complete game the iteration made was designed to create a possible feedback loop, the decision was to grant a bidder with a chance to regain a die, should his bid be exactly as bid, when the dice are counted after a challenge. With this iteration, dice were regained twice in a game, so didn't have a huge affect on the game, although it would have helped those players a dice or more down. Something I have learnt from iterating games is it is best to work backwards by making the iteration extreme to start with, if it is too extreme, tone it down in the next iteration, but if the balance is good it can stay.
I played the game in a group of seven, I found the game very simple, but enjoyable, partly because of its simplicity. After a complete game the iteration made was designed to create a possible feedback loop, the decision was to grant a bidder with a chance to regain a die, should his bid be exactly as bid, when the dice are counted after a challenge. With this iteration, dice were regained twice in a game, so didn't have a huge affect on the game, although it would have helped those players a dice or more down. Something I have learnt from iterating games is it is best to work backwards by making the iteration extreme to start with, if it is too extreme, tone it down in the next iteration, but if the balance is good it can stay.
Players Who Suit MUDs
After reading this article, the main points I extracted from the article were the classification of the character traits of people that play MUD's, I would agree with the types that Bartle defines which are: Explorers, Socialisers, Killers, Achievers. All of these categories have very obvious meanings behind them:
Explorers - Like to explore the world and interact
Socialisers - Like to talk and interact with other players in the game world
Killers - Like to other players, and talk very little
Achievers - Like to play to achieve in the game
As discussed in class, some people may differ slightly but they can still fit in or between one of these base categories. For myself, I have never played a MUD or a similar; MMORPG, but I think these categories can expand into some other games, especially those that use a sandbox technique for the game, when defining myself I find it quite difficult as I feel my playing style varies depending on my mood, but as a general default I would say the explorer category suits me best.
Richard A. Bartle Players Who Suit MUDs http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm
Explorers - Like to explore the world and interact
Socialisers - Like to talk and interact with other players in the game world
Killers - Like to other players, and talk very little
Achievers - Like to play to achieve in the game
As discussed in class, some people may differ slightly but they can still fit in or between one of these base categories. For myself, I have never played a MUD or a similar; MMORPG, but I think these categories can expand into some other games, especially those that use a sandbox technique for the game, when defining myself I find it quite difficult as I feel my playing style varies depending on my mood, but as a general default I would say the explorer category suits me best.
Richard A. Bartle Players Who Suit MUDs http://www.mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm
Monday 29 November 2010
RTS Hex Game Iterations
The aim of the game was to eliminate other players, movement was implemented through a series of cards, which included: Move (in the current facing direction three spaces), Turn and move (only by one angle, in either direction and move 3 spaces), Turn (in any of the six available directions) and Fire, (fires in the current direction, eliminating players on that path). Each player would decide their move, and lay the appropriate card simultaneous to the other players laying their chosen cards, the moves would then be carried out in the same order as written above.
The problem we found with this game is that it could go on for a long time, when it got down to just two players, they would constantly try to out manouvre each other but with no prevail, this would continue until one player would purposely lose so the game could be reset, and the other players who are out join in again.
The iterations we made to the game included:
Walls The walls in the game were simply clusters of shaded hexes, which provided obstacles that could not be crossed or shot through, they would also act as cover that could be used for more tactical play, unfortunately the walls had little effect on the game, especially if a player tried to use the walls as cover, as it would slow down the game, and not necessarily give an advantage to the player.
Portals The portals on the board were simply a few hexes spread across the board with a spiral symbol on, these could be used to teleport to any other portal, when entered by a player. This had a mild affect on the game as on a few occasions a player could warp to a position behind another player, which would give an advantage, but this worked well rarely.
Turn and fire card The turn and fire card was implemented as we found that on many occasions players were faced with a situation where if they were able to turn and fire they would be able to eliminate a player. We decided to have this card as a one use only, which in hindsight may not have been the best choice, as it was a card designed to speed up the game play and tactics, once it was used it was not regain-able.
Sprint card The sprint card allowed a player to move up to six hexes, in one turn, again like the turn and fire card this was one use only, so didn't help to speed up the game much. With both of these added cards we should have implemented a way to regain the ability, possibly by collecting tokens from points on the board, or simply by a regeneration over a number of goes (although the latter would be harder to keep track of)
Overall I think are iterations were not very affective but, were close to improving the game if they had been tweaked slightly. Even if they had been I think the game would still be lacking something, I felt it needed a different objective as the 'eliminate the other players' objective, seemed to make for a very simple game that would rapidly get boring for the players, perhaps introducing a capture the flag or king of the hill objective would have worked better for this game and should have been what we implemented, rather than implementing different tools to improve a game with a poor objective.
The problem we found with this game is that it could go on for a long time, when it got down to just two players, they would constantly try to out manouvre each other but with no prevail, this would continue until one player would purposely lose so the game could be reset, and the other players who are out join in again.
The iterations we made to the game included:
Walls The walls in the game were simply clusters of shaded hexes, which provided obstacles that could not be crossed or shot through, they would also act as cover that could be used for more tactical play, unfortunately the walls had little effect on the game, especially if a player tried to use the walls as cover, as it would slow down the game, and not necessarily give an advantage to the player.
Portals The portals on the board were simply a few hexes spread across the board with a spiral symbol on, these could be used to teleport to any other portal, when entered by a player. This had a mild affect on the game as on a few occasions a player could warp to a position behind another player, which would give an advantage, but this worked well rarely.
Turn and fire card The turn and fire card was implemented as we found that on many occasions players were faced with a situation where if they were able to turn and fire they would be able to eliminate a player. We decided to have this card as a one use only, which in hindsight may not have been the best choice, as it was a card designed to speed up the game play and tactics, once it was used it was not regain-able.
Sprint card The sprint card allowed a player to move up to six hexes, in one turn, again like the turn and fire card this was one use only, so didn't help to speed up the game much. With both of these added cards we should have implemented a way to regain the ability, possibly by collecting tokens from points on the board, or simply by a regeneration over a number of goes (although the latter would be harder to keep track of)
Overall I think are iterations were not very affective but, were close to improving the game if they had been tweaked slightly. Even if they had been I think the game would still be lacking something, I felt it needed a different objective as the 'eliminate the other players' objective, seemed to make for a very simple game that would rapidly get boring for the players, perhaps introducing a capture the flag or king of the hill objective would have worked better for this game and should have been what we implemented, rather than implementing different tools to improve a game with a poor objective.
Battle Ships Iterations
Iterations to battle ships included:
A 'cross' explosion like the explosions, in 'bomberman', this advantage would only occur if a player managed to destroy an enemy ship without missing since the first hit, from then the explosion would cross from the point of the last hit, both vertically and horizontally, covering one complete row, and one complete column. Although the idea seems quite reasonable, achieving this bonus was rather hard, as destroying a ship outright with no misses is not such a common occurrence in the game, however what it did help to add to the game is more strategy in the placing of the ships, since the last hit part of the ship could potentially cause another ship to be hit through the after explosion. Unfortunately the bonus was only achieved once throughout the games we played, and then no ships were hit. I think this iteration would have been more successful if it had occurred, after any ship was destroyed, regardless of misses, or even the effect only happens on certain types of pre defined ships, or perhaps the player has one of these to cash in on the last square hit of any ship, the possibilities go on.
Mines, two of which have to be placed by each player on their own board, (amongst their own ships) mines when hit by the other player, would cause an explosion 1 square thick around the point of the mine, creating a 3x3 blast area in total, hitting a mine would also mean the player whose mine was hit would miss their next turn. Again the same problem occurred, in that these were not very often hit, although it was hit in one game, it had very little impact to the play of the game.
A 'cross' explosion like the explosions, in 'bomberman', this advantage would only occur if a player managed to destroy an enemy ship without missing since the first hit, from then the explosion would cross from the point of the last hit, both vertically and horizontally, covering one complete row, and one complete column. Although the idea seems quite reasonable, achieving this bonus was rather hard, as destroying a ship outright with no misses is not such a common occurrence in the game, however what it did help to add to the game is more strategy in the placing of the ships, since the last hit part of the ship could potentially cause another ship to be hit through the after explosion. Unfortunately the bonus was only achieved once throughout the games we played, and then no ships were hit. I think this iteration would have been more successful if it had occurred, after any ship was destroyed, regardless of misses, or even the effect only happens on certain types of pre defined ships, or perhaps the player has one of these to cash in on the last square hit of any ship, the possibilities go on.
Mines, two of which have to be placed by each player on their own board, (amongst their own ships) mines when hit by the other player, would cause an explosion 1 square thick around the point of the mine, creating a 3x3 blast area in total, hitting a mine would also mean the player whose mine was hit would miss their next turn. Again the same problem occurred, in that these were not very often hit, although it was hit in one game, it had very little impact to the play of the game.
New Games Journalism
I read a new games journalism article titled; Bow Nigger, I found the article quite interesting to read, and felt that I could link some of the experiences mentioned in the article about the online world of the game and encounters with different players within the walls of the game world, not to the same game, but to other online games. I enjoyed reading the article, and I think it told the story of the experience very well, however as an article based on a game, it contained very little facts about the actual game, there were little chunks of information about the game and some of its mechanics mixed in with the story of the experience, but not enough to know the game well, without having to play it. Despite the lack of detail about the game itself, I found whilst reading I was able to form a simple idea of what the game was like, and I enjoyed reading it as an insight to a players experience within the game, rather than a more traditional games article, which would have been more based on the game itself rather than on a meaningful experience within the game. In summary, I enjoyed reading the article and accept it as a story of a players experience within the game, instead of a review of the game, its not the sort of thing I would want to read if I was looking at potentially purchasing the game.
Tuesday 12 October 2010
Board game development
Today I made changes to my game. I wanted mainly to tidy up the game board, as it was rather cluttered. I also wanted to simplify the rules as when I initially designed it I kept adding new elements and it got quite confusing. I re-wrote the rules more clearly and re-designed the bored and cards which helped to give the game a clearer look. However when playing the game, it was a bit boring. The idea in my game is for one player to be designated as the chaser, and the other players have to 'race to the finish' without being eliminated by the chaser by losing all their three lives. The chaser uses a 4 sided die while the other players use a regular die. I think the game is over complicated, and the chaser is considerably under powered. For example when the game was played the chaser only managed to take one life from the other players, (each player starts with three). I think I would rather abandon this concept than continue to refine the design.
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